Connection types

The sponsored account definition allows the entry of a connection type reference, such as "supplier". If not specified, a default of "partner" is used.

This section describes how connection types work.

Each instance of the portal is associated with a connection types node, either found using the connectionTypes binding or the Standard Connection Types.

The connection types node contains a JSON object in the Node options field. This object takes the form.

{
  "connectionTypeReference": {
    .. properties ..
  }, ... more connection types
}

The properties are defined in the Connection setup step type.

Each connection type is a recipe for creating a connection. For sponsored accounts the relevant properties that don't just default are:

The path, icon and color properties are relatively simple to understand.

The reciprocal property is used when a connection is completed. For example, if Alice sends Bob connection details with a connection type of "supplier", this means that Alice thinks of Bob as a supplier. Bob would look up his connection type of "supplier" and find that the reciprocal is "customer", which means that Bob thinks of Alice as a customer. Bob would then look up his "customer" connection type to work out parent path, icon and color. There are fallbacks in the processing, which means that if a reciprocal cannot be found, the standard "partner" connection type is used or suitable defaults taken.

Importantly, Alice can only declare that she thinks of Bob as a supplier. It is up to Bob to decide what he thinks of Alice.

For sponsored accounts, the definition specifies the type of connection that the sponsor would have for the partner (sponsored) account. For example, for a supplier portal, where the partner accounts are for suppliers, the connection type would be set to "supplier". The partner end of the connection is created first, and uses the reciprocal defined at the partner end to determine the connection type that the partner should use. In our example, we would expect this to be "customer".

When the sponsor account completes the connection, it does not use the reciprocal processing, but uses the connection type from the definition, rather than using the reciprocal of the reciprocal.